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User blog:72e/Protagonist Skills Discussion
For a beginning player, maxing the skills of all the onmyoji are not easy, so it's hard to tell the strength of an onmyoji at full strength and how imbalanced they are. The below is an opinionated post by 玩笑王的大玩笑 from NGA.http://bbs.ngacn.cc/read.php?tid=11534581 Translated by 72e. Preamble In the game, the onmyoji serves as an important aspect of the formation, their skills are fixed, and a key component of strategy. It could be argued that whatever skill an onmyoji uses will decide what the team does. This is also why the unchanging 128 is such a significant speed to focus on. However, the balancing between characters do not do much justice to such a number with the exception of Seimei. Abe no Seimei Perhaps Seimei has the most suitable level strength out of all protagonists, and the current situation where the rest of the characters are imbalanced are because of how weak they are, whether it is PVP or PVE. That Seimei can take an all-rounded offensive, defense, and controlling role deserves praise. Thematically, his skills also feel like that of an onmyoji. Now, Seimei is the only one who can create a shield, and the significance of this counter becomes very clear in duels. Meanwhile, his binding can be resisted, but if resist fails, then it becomes a undispellable hard control which is still stronger than the rest of his compatriots. The other skills are average. Star, Death, and Life have their uses, although they do increase efficiency on the PVE front. His ignition is basically the only useless skill. Minamoto no Hiromasa Hiromasa's skillset clearly belongs to a pure attacker kind of mindset. Yet, the design of the skills are simple but not crude - they all have interesting points and have synergy. Perhaps they are the most individualized skills out of all the characters, but the issue is how weak they are. When using Hiromasa, a typical player's line of thought would be that they have no need for a protagonist to act as support or control, but simply want a bit more damage. But this damage doesn't change. For a low level player, a maxed Hiromasa has perhaps the highest damage and carries the entire team. But when your entire team has been maxed, just Hiromasa alone can't hope to compete with Seimei's Star buff or Kagura's Storm, in fact, even Kagura's passive is no less strong than several of Hiromasa's arrows. For an attacker to be unable to raise their damage is truly devastating. With the exception of Seimei, Hiromasa is technically competitive for PVE use, but the hard restrictions on his damage is a reality that cannot be ignored. High level instances where the frozen time strategy + Hiromasa attacker tactic completely fails reduces his usefulness even more. As for his death passive, it's possible that against Shozu teams the onmyoji is the first to die, and at that point Hiromasa is the only protagonist that is not entirely helpless against that kind of thing and actually fight back, but such cases are rare. Kagura Kagura's appearance rate is inferior only to Seimei, and her Storm skill would be the reason for that. Whether it's for farming in early game or duelling in late game, Storm is just as oppressive as Seimei's shield. It's also why Yokinshi lineups exist. This more flexible usage of speed spawned the "triple pull double attack" meta that was all the rage for a while. Kagura has even been used as a "farmer" because of her AOE and fish. However as a core of a formation, there really isn't actually anything special about her. The level of strength and standout features are just too average. Strength PVE-wise, Kagura has the same issue as her brother: she has a limit. The limit of a maxed Kagura is soloing difficult chapter 16, any more and she becomes non-competitive in terms of game experience or efficiency. And Storm when going full auto... In PVP, there is no other reason to use Kagura other than Storm, even if all the reasons are there. And as for Netherworld Butterflies and Umbrella, they're honestly overhyped. Whether it's for the self or against the opponent, their usages are pretty bad. Umbrella might've been a good survival skill, but the design is too middling and doesn't counter anything in particular, and the CD being tied to her own speed means that there's not a lot of room to navigate. The butterflies can either be dispelled, and the soft control is too RNG. Maybe it works in a debuff team, but is it honestly as good as if something else was switched in? When using Umbrella and Storm in duel, it's literally because the other choices are too poor, the focus remains on Storm. Now, a word on life extension, you can indeed achieve a level of strength for that, but it's tied to certain shikigami. Specialty So, there's no individuality about Kagura's skills, which directly impacts her strength. Looking at Seimei, you can combine his skills into many decent effects, like shield + bind for allowances in control chain, star + death to increase damage, as well as bind + death or bind+star to guarantee damage, shield + life to survive, shield + star as all-rounder, etc. Basically any combination is good. Meanwhile, Hiromasa's clone and eye can be used in many counter teams. The single target and AOE skills may be used for some degree of damage. If not for his stats, Hiromasa would also be an excellent attacker. Yao Bikuni seems to be unpopular, but her special brand of tactics as a support is a mature template to build on. So what does Kagura bring to the table? Honestly, only Storm. Even in a character like Seimei, you never see a skill receiving so much importance, but Storm is it. Further, the skills have no synergy, okay, so Purgatory and Netherworld Butterflies are both debuffs, and it's not necessarily impossible to use Kagura for that. But in PVP, that kind of instability for status effects is just not acceptable. Of course she is compatible with Kuro Doji, but that makes her usage too fixed. Yao Bikuni Bikuni is a pure PVP character, so don't expect for her to be of any use for PVE, it's like expecting Hiromasa to be good at healing. With the exception of Meteor Rain, she honestly can't be used much in PVE. Foresight and revival might be applicable in some cases, but these battles are tests of playing ability anyways. On the PVP front, Bikuni has the fundamentals in place to be a good protagonist. Three different ways to protect allies, can heal, and even a sealing ability. The passive dispel helps allies in escaping control. These skills are useful against attacker, counter, and control comps. Well, at least that's what her skills seem to say, here's the reality: against attackers, you actually need to get Yao Bikuni to her turn to use her protective skills, which is most likely not happening. Reflect and heal won't necessarily hinder the opponent from attacking, and it's easy to misgauge when to revive or heal. Foresight is only useful for attackers, after all, sure supports can crit, but they're too busy using their skills than attacking. As for Curse of Star, the skill is good, the chances are good, but it can be dispelled. Summary # The most useful skill combination is reflect + heal # Curse of Star is undependable, you have no way of determining if the opponent will use Ame Onna, and you're not guaranteed to control the target you want even if you do manage to seal some # Bikuni can't replace heal, her skills either have CD, or their activation can't actually be well-controlled. They need superior judgement and appropriate opponents to be useful # Don't expect too much out of Bikuni's passive either So basically, Bikuni has extremely high requirements in terms of controls no matter which skills you use, and you must be able to predict the actions of your opponent. For example, her divinations. If you want to heal, you must be a capable judge of whether if the target is alive by the time they get healed. If you are preparing to revive an ally but they miraculously survived, then you've not only wasted the CD, they might also die when you are no longer able to save them. So don't have any illusions that the opponent will have issues in guessing what your Divination skill is, as long as they're patient, your plan will be instantly exposed after 1 round. Thus, only reflect has one effect - trading one of their shikigami for yours. Meanwhile, you waste a turn using revive. However, this implies that the opponent has to delay their plans for 1 round to determine the nature of your divination, and either intentionally skirt around killing your protected ally, or rough it out. The healing divination cannot accomplish this, thus, when you can't judge the force of the opponent's attack and your own dexterity, these two options are the safest route to take. It's already been mentioned that Yao Bikuni has extremely high requirements regarding player control ability. Typically, characters like this have extreme lower and upper limits, and there's a vast difference between people that don't or do know how to use her. Yao Bikuni embodies all of that. However, the true problem with Bikuni is that, this upper limit is mismatched with the level of skill needed in using her. For example, you made all the correct moves when it came to protecting an ally. But, so? This is as simple as Seimei releasing a shield and resolving the issue the same way. So, the lack of popularity in using divination speaks for itself. For a character to have such a kit, the skill effects are quite disappointing. Judging by the below, none of the other skills are worth using: Skills # Compared to Seimei's Bind/Death, Kagura's Netherworld Butterflies (100% base accuracy) or Purgatory (3-stage chance for control), the effect of Curse of Star or Meteor Rain are almost unnoticeable # At least using Divination requires the opponent to think a little. Unlike Seimei, Kagura, or Hiromasa, who create oppressive sitations to defeat enemies, Yao Bikuni creates an oppressive situation to force the enemies to reply, making these skills stand out. Yet, the oppressiveness of these Divinations aren't strong enough, and the nicheness means opposing onmyoji just avoid them and the oppressiveness situation is bypassed entirely # Foresight and the passive are awkwardly designed, both in terms of the RNG, and also to force your shikigami to not just waste one turn of Bikuni's but also their own, while the healing effect is often unsatisfactory Conclusion To sum it up, Bikuni and Hiromasa have interesting skills that are too weak, limited due to the speed of the onmyoji and the extremely low and high limits. I feel for those who are trying to complete their achievements. References Category:Blog posts Category:General